HC Deb 20 April 1875 vol 223 cc1283-4
MR. SERJEANT SIMON (for Mr. WADDY)

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether it is true that the Vicar of Beckley has refusal to allow the performance of any religious ceremonial at the burial of a child in the Beckley Churchyard, on the ground that the child had been baptized in a Wesleyan Methodist Chapel only; whether it is true that when the father of the child reminded him that his wife (the child's mother) had recently been buried there, and the burial service had then been read by the Vicar himself, although she had been baptized in the same Chapel, the vicar still refused to allow the child to be buried in the same grave with its mother with the ordinary rites of Christian burial, and that the child was accordingly buried there by the sexton without any religious service whatever?

MR. HEYGATE

asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department, Whether a clergyman, refusing to read the Burial Service "on the ground that the deceased had been baptized in a Wesleyan Chapel only" (as alleged by the honourable Member for Barnstaple in the case of the Vicar of Beckley), would not be acting in contravention of the existing law?

MR. ASSHETON CROSS

It may be convenient that I should answer both these Questions at once. I have held communications on this question, and from the statements I have received, it seems that the circumstances are substantially as they have been stated, except as to the part of the statement respecting the burial of the child. It appears also that the incumbent did not know that he was bound by law to read the burial service. The burial service was read by him over the mother, he not knowing at the time that she had been baptized at a Wesleyan chapel. I have no doubt this clergyman acted through an entirely mistaken sense of duty, and he has been admonished by the Bishop of the diocese. I am advised that there is no doubt as to the illegality of the proceeding; and, in my opinion, and probably that of most persons, it is entirely opposed to all feelings of humanity and Christianity.